We are in our series entitled The Fight where we wanna help you win the battles that matter most. And today we are talking about the topic of mental health. Now, in my experience as a pastor oftentimes that topic, when you say mental health, there's like this awkward pause, right? And there's people across the spectrum on their views of that. Well, today we're gonna try to break down the stigma of, of mental health as well as provide help and hope for those who are fighting unseen battles. You see according to the government statistics, here is that 43 million Americans face mental health issues in any given years. That's one in five adults. And then it's not just something that adults struggle with too, that actually studies show that one in five Children under the age of 18 have a a diagnosable psychiatric disorder of some kind, especially in our culture coming out of the pandemic, uh the the health within our minds and the things that we walk through I think is one of the biggest challenges in the church today. And growing up, we, we didn't really talk about it that much and we wanna change that and we wanna make it open and, and honest and helpful along with coming out of the pandemic and seeing so many challenges that people face. My heart is, is really prompted to discuss this too because of the incredible woman that I'm married to my, my wife Samantha Cragle. So not only is she incredibly attractive to saying that throwing that out there. Um and Lee pastor's wife and mother of three incredible Children, along with that, she went and got the graduate degree and now is working as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. And so while she's wears so many different hats right now, um I mean, she, she sees it, she's on the front lines every single week um helping people treating people, uh everything and, and so the depth of which she can care for people and the wisdom that she's brought to that really has opened my eyes and heart to the needs of so many people in our culture, we tend to think of mental health in very extreme ways, but actually, it's a very normal thing. And so we want to discuss that and see often in church, we discuss the bigness of God, right? For God so loved the world. God created the world that God loves all that. We're all sinners like this, this bigness of God, which is great. Today, we're gonna take a little bit of a different approach. And instead of talking about the bigness of God. We're gonna actually zoom in and talk about the nearness of God. And that while God so loved the world, God also cares for each and every person and our practical lives and that our faith is not theoretical, is not simply theological, but it's personal and it's practical. And so if you're taking notes, I want you to write this down, that God cares for the whole person. God cares for the whole person. You can think about it in this way that for God so loved, the world understand is that for God, so loved and you can insert your name for God, so loved me. And when we say me, when we say us, it means all of you. Psalm 139 is a great passage that talks about the sanctity of life and the intentionality of God's design. And so there's a verse that's quoted often and I love that verse. But today, I want you to notice the verse that comes right before it. You might not have realized this before, but notice the verse, you're gonna recognize the very famous verse. But I want you to notice the verse right before and see it in context here in Psalm 139 verses 11 to 14 says, if I say surely the darkness shall cover me and the light be about me being night, that's pretty dark. Even the darkness is not dark to you. And the night is as bright as the day. For the darkness is as light with you. For you formed my inward parts, you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for, I am fearfully and wonderfully made that last part. I praise you for. I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. We, we like to celebrate God's intelligence and design and creation and the protection of the unborn. And so we celebrate that and we praise that and we preach that here. But I want you to notice that the verse right before that actually talks about darkness and, and the whole chapter talks about the, whether I'm high, whether I'm low, whether I'm in a crowd, whether I'm isolated and all these places, God, you are there and you've searched me and you know me and you are with me. And so I just want you to recognize the fact this morning that even in your darkest moments, even in your darkest valleys, in your darkest hour that God sees you and God is with you. And in those moments, He looks at you and says, you are fearfully and wonderfully made another famous verse. But if you actually understand the context of it and the subtleness of it, you, you see that God loves and desires the love back from the whole person, what's known as the great commandment. Jesus says these words in mark 1230 31 it says that you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and that the second is this, that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And there is no other commandment greater than these. We, we plug it every week, but I just, there's gonna be a lot of notes today because we wanna be really helpful and practical. And so I encourage you more than ever to visit mission grove.info to download the notes and links that we're gonna share because we're gonna give you a lot of resources. And so if you miss something, writing it down, just know you can go back to that uh this week and download that. But I want you to see something here. So the great commitment, love the Lord, your God and love your neighbor as yourself. This is a great commandment that we try to live out as a church, right? Love God, love others. But I want you to see the sub context of that, that when God is commanding us to love him and to love others, he actually names the different faculties that make up the whole person. Here's what I mean. The whole person is made up of five things. Number one is emotional health, love the Lord your God with all your heart. God cares about your emotions. Number two, notice that God cares about your spiritual health, to love the Lord, your God with all your heart. And your soul. So spiritual health is important. How are you doing with your connection to God? Number three, it says the love the Lord, your God with all your mind. So he cares about your mental health and we're gonna spend more time on that and, and focus our time there. But I want you to get this picture of the entirety of what God's after and the entirety of just how much God loves you. Because number four, you see here that God cares about your physical health, to love the Lord, your God with all your strength. And so you see the emotional health, spiritual health, mental health, physical health. And the last thing here, then he says it's just as important, it's equal in importance and in value. And they're actually connected together to love your neighbor as yourself. And then in actually John's gospel says to love your neighbor as I have loved you, that means Jesus cares about your relational health. And so when you see emotional, spiritual, mental, physical relational, we get this understanding that God cares about the whole person and everything that you are. And that's important to God, which means you can also worship God as a whole person and we want you to be whole people here at the church. So let's jump into this discussion here a little bit more about OK, what exactly is mental health? Well, just a practical definition coming from mental health.gov right here. Is that our emotional is uh mental health is our emotional, psychological and social well being. It affects how we think, feel and act. It helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others and make healthy choices. I like to think of it this way. There's three components to mental health. Well, number one, mental health involves complexity. Number two, mental health involves chemistry. And then number three, mental health involves our choices. So it's complex. There's chemistry and there's choices. Mental weather is very complex because so much of what comes into play is outside of our control, right? There are circumstances that happen. There are triggers from events, there is trauma that comes in and, and no two people are alike. You can have the same trigger or the same trauma affects two people in very different ways. You can have the same diagnosis of a person and treatment is gonna be varied in very different ways. And that's why it's so hard to talk about because it's complex. Everything mixes together how you were raised, what you experienced, what have you, what have you taken into your body? Right? And, and drugs and addictions, things often comes into play too. But then when you think about the trauma that you've experienced and the difficult circumstances that have triggered things happen. So then your body then responds either fight or flight to certain circumstances. You understand, this is not just a take this one pill and it's done. This is not just have one therapy session and it's done, this can be a very long road to travel with a lot of different factors that come into play. And I think that's why we struggle as a church to talk about it because there's not a simple answer. So the starting point is just to recognize that it's complex. But next, we can see that it does involve chemistry and this is where it gets funky with people because you know, if you have a heart condition and someone gives you heart medication, we don't think anything about it, right? If you have an immune disorder and you take medication, we don't think anything about it. Well, then if you have something chemically off or, or different in your brain and you take medication there, we get nervous. Go ahead. But there is chemistry involved just as there is medically, just as you would go see a doctor for your body. There are times where you see a doctor for your mind. And while the first two things are outside of our control or the complexity, the circumstances, then the chemistry, how our body is made. The third component actually is in our control and that is our choices and we can choose how to respond and sometimes we can help the situation. Sometimes we can hurt the situation. And so we're gonna lean into that a little bit, but let's dive in a little bit deeper. Here and give a definition to mental illness. Now, mental illness is defined this way. It is a disease causing mild to significant disturbances. Notice that it's a wide spectrum here, mild to significant differences in thinking behavior and or emotion resulting in the inability to cope with ordinary life challenges and routines. There is a battle for your mental health when it impacts your functioning and day to day life. If you're struggling to cope with routines or rhythms of life, it might be time to talk to somebody about it. OK? And we wanna get practical here too because I, I just wanna encourage because there, there is a wide spectrum. Again, it's very complex. It's very big. And so mental illness covers everything from anxiety to a DH D to depression bipolar, borderline personality, PTSD and many others and, and stay with me. We're gonna actually offer a free resource for you today to help give some frameworks and handles and definitions to these things if you want to take offline together. And so there are so many different things and sometimes they're combined together. And so that's where we struggle like, well, what do we do? Well, I wanna encourage you with a few things this morning. OK? If you're battling something, if you're going through, you're afraid to tell someone what's going on. Can I just tell you a few things? It is not a sin to be sick. You might be walking through something right now that it is not your fault. You do not need to be ashamed. If someone has cancer, there's no shame there. If someone is battling an illness, we describe that person as courageous, don't we? Why don't we do that with mental health? It is important to know that it is not a sin to be sick. That God loves the whole person, meaning he loves you as you are. Another thing to note is that your chemistry is not your character. How God wired you, how God made you does not determine your character. You get to choose that your identity is not, your illness is not your battle. I want you to know that God loves you even in those battles that go unseen, right? My my son broke his hand like a month or two ago, right? And that's a very visible injury, right? You see the cast, you know what it is, right? You go through, there's no like shame in that, right? But how many of us honestly have a little bit of a cast in our mind or in our emotions, we're walking through something that's a lot more difficult to walk around with because it's unseen. I want you to know that God sees you and that it's ok and that your character, your identity, your value is based in the God who fearfully and wonderfully made you and is with you even in your darkest times, I also wanna say this here is that sometimes you need more than a Bible verse, right? We understand this in every area of life when it comes to our finances and education and work and treatment of other things. Right? We we, we don't think twice about going to the grocery store to get food like we're praying for food. Well, ok, you can go to the store, right? Man, I got a sinus infection. You can get some medicine for that, right? We we go to the source, we go to experts, we go to these things. Understand that Bible verses are very valuable. In fact, that's how we're gonna close our service today. This with some encouragement about the promises of God. So they're very valuable. But I want you to know that it's OK to pursue help. Actually a healthy thing to do that. We need to remove the stigma behind that and, and say that it's OK to talk to somebody. You're not weak by saying I need help. That's a very courageous thing to do. I spent time talking with one of my friends here uh Andrew who is in the service here with us this morning, who he's had to walk through some mental health challenges throughout his life. And, and so I, I said, I, I talked with him for a little bit and I said, hey, what would you say to someone walking through stuff right now? And he said, he told me he said, you need to find a support system that might, you might be walking through something really tough, but you don't need to walk through it alone. And he said, don't be afraid of taking medication. There are experts, there are people who can help. I can speak to that as my wife, as someone who does and has seen transformation happen that gets people into regular rhythms and routines and, and, and seeing fruitfulness in their lives. We don't need to be afraid of that. Then I asked him, what would you say to loved ones who ha who have people that they care about walking through a mental health challenge? And he told me the number one thing that was helpful for him is when people would show up and listen, show up and listen, understand that we're all human beings and that we listen to other challenges that people have. And so allow that person to express and if somebody's going through something or saying things that maybe outside of themselves, understand that it's not a personal thing. It's a, it's a response to something. And so it's amazing how far you can get by just leaning in and listening to someone to be present with them. And then the last thing I asked the Andrew, I said, how, how has your experience been with church and mental health? He says, well, to be frank, not great, people don't want to talk about it and people pull themselves away from issues. And so I said so well. And then why is it if, if people have kind of pushed you away from certain things, why is it that you still come to church? And I loved his response. And he said these words, he said, why come? Because God never changes? And people can grow there again. God never changes and people can grow. And so there's hope for you, there's hope for your loved ones and lean into that and invite God into that battle with you. And I think you'll see amazing things. Now, let's get real practical here again. We wanna remove the stigma and then we wanna offer some help and hope this morning. And so let me share with you just three steps. You can take just practical steps if you feel like you might be walking through one of these battles. OK? Number one is to simply acknowledge that something is off, something is off, you know, the, the emotion isn't there. You feel detached, you uh feel more on edge than normal. There's, there's something just off a little bit. And if you don't notice it, maybe a loved one or friend does. Are you willing to at least acknowledge that something is off? And number two, it just be open to seeking help, seeking help might just start with having a conversation with a friend. It might lead to a conversation with a therapist or a counselor. It might lead to a conversation with a doctor. I don't know. Were you willing to at least have a conversation? Because then that last component there is to commit to talking to someone about it. You might be going through an unseen battle but don't go through that unseen battle alone. There is reso there are resources available to you to help. Remember they're just ABC and acknowledge that something's off, be open to seeking help and then commit to talking to someone. And I think if you do that, you can take a step down the path towards healing because we have a God who is a healer, we have a God who meets you in the path, who meets you in the trenches, who loves you and is with you. And I want you to know that while you might not be feeling OK? It is OK and that God is good and God is with you and that God has a purpose for you in this and that there is change, that is possible and there is joy, that is possible. So not only do I encourage you to take these steps? I want to really think through, ok. What does it mean back to our big idea here that God cares for the whole person. So John, I'm afraid to get help. I I don't like the stigma if I talk to a therapist or a counselor or see a doctor, I, I don't wanna do that one of the common pictures that ex wife shares with clients and things is that don't think of it like, oh, I need therapy. Think about it as adding another tool to the toolbox. Right? When you walk through life, you need different tools for different jobs, right? You might need a screwdriver, you might need a hammer, might need a saw. You need, there's different tools for different jobs in life. Well, if you seek help and assistance, it's not because simply because you're in need, it's because you're adding another tool to the toolbox that you can be more productive in this life and, and, and experience life better, right? And so what we wanna do to end the service today is we wanna actually help and give some initial ways to add some more tools to your toolbox for you or maybe you have a loved one walking through that. And I wanna share your two things with you and these two resources come from people who are very close to the mental health issue. I want you to know this too. That mental health is not a gauge of how close you are to God or not. It strikes homes that are faithfully loving and obeying God and it strikes homes of people who are far from God. Mental health does not discriminate the people that it impacts. And I share that because Rick and Kay Warren Rick who wrote the Purpose Driven Life at one of the most influential churches in the last 100 years has, has started a peace project, has started all these things. And in the middle of all this, they, they lost their son to suicide over a mental health issue 10 years ago. And I can tell you, there is no one who had more prayer, more humility, seeking help in this family. And yet they walked through this difficulty. And so in response to what happened and even in their grief, they, they chose to use their grief to help and encourage others. And so out of that launched the ministry connecting the church and mental health together. And so I wanna share this incredible resource with you and it's free to download right now. It's on the screen again. You can visit this uh download this from Mi Mission grove.info. You got a QR code up on the screen there, save that. And the reason this is so valuable, this is 100 page resource that you can download for free. Some of the things that are in there. Uh signs of mental health types of mental health definitions, descriptions, percentage of how many people it impacts frequently asked questions, websites, resources, phone numbers, book recommendations, scripts or verses. So, I mean, this thing is awesome. And so I invite you to download that. Save that or if you're watching this later, uh go to Mission grove.info, download it, save it. There's a button right there. Mental health resource. Kit and know that you don't have to live in this ambiguous question. You can actually read about these disorders and see actually how common they are and signs to look for questions, to ask how to encourage Children, how to encourage adults recommendations. Steps to take. And I love that. And so we can't cover everything here in a 30 minute message. And so I invite you to take, take this, download it, read it at home and know that there is help available. So there's this resource right here. It's free for you. They made it free for us. And so we share it with you to take that and share that with those who might benefit from it. But then last, I wanna end, you end with this. And while you might need to talk to a counselor, you might need to seek some assistance. I want you to know that our thoughts sometimes lie to us. And if you have feelings of like I hate myself that I don't matter that I don't fit in that I want to give up that I feel useless. I want you to know that's not from God. And I know that because the promises of God say differently. And if you question your identity, if you're questioning, if you're feeling guilty, if you're feeling shameful, if you're feeling worthless, understand that the God who fearfully and wonderfully made you says differently and if I'm gonna trust my feelings or the promises of God. I'm gonna go promises of God because your feelings might lie to you. Your thoughts might lie to you. But the promises of God were true yesterday, they are true today. They will be true tomorrow and they will stand for all eternity. It is called the hope cycle. You can screenshot this here. If you want the image, just put it in the next step card, I'll send it to you or you can just Google ho the hope cycle and you can find it up here. But it's these promises that when you feel like you hate yourself, remind yourself that you are love that comes from first John 410, not that we love God, but that he loved us so much that he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for us. When you're feeling like you don't matter. You can remind yourself of Colossians 116 that He created all things visible and indi visible in heavens and on earth where the Thrones dominions powers or authorities, God created all things through Him. And for Him, you are created on purpose and with a purpose. Church, when you feel like you don't fit in, you can remind yourself in Romans 12, 4 and five that we are all part of one body, different members, but we need each other. And so yes, you belong. You don't need to believe to belong. You, you belong because you are a child of God that He loved you first. And when you are facing this idea that I wanna give in, I wanna give up. That's when we can remind ourselves that you have a choice. That famous verse Philippians 413, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Paul says, I understand what it means to be needy. I understand what it means to have abundance and in all things, I believe, you know, the characters of the Bible had mental issues too, battles, they faced to depression and strength. If you look throughout church history, some of the people who did the greatest things for God had the darkest struggles when they were alone. God can use you. And if you feel just useless, God doesn't understand me. God can't use me. I've made too many mistakes. I struggle. I'm too worried, I'm too anxious. I'm too depressed. Remind yourself that you were needed. Second Corinthians, 13 and four tells us that we have the God of all comfort, but He doesn't just comfort you for comfort's sake. It actually says in this passage that He comforts you so that you may comfort all those who are afflicted. You wanna find meaning and purpose look to encourage someone who's walking through the same battle that you've walked through. You know what it means to someone when you can look in their eyes and say, hey, I get it. I've been there. I know what you're going through. I want you to know that God loves you, church, whatever you're walking through today, know that God cares for the whole person that you are loved, that you have purpose, that you belong, that you have a choice and you are needed. Whatever unseen battle you're walking through. God sees it and we're here and we love you and we want to help. Will you pray with me, dear Heavenly Father? We shared about the principles of mental health. But I'm guessing that those who hear it are thinking of a person thinking of uh themselves or a family member or friend. This is very personal. But God, you remind us that you care about the whole person for all that we are, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made that we are to love you with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love others. The way that you have loved us. Let us not be afraid to have difficult conversations, let us seek help and have conversations that can help and let us show up and listen and support those who are in need because we are the body and while we are hurting God, you are here and you provide healing. So we lift up our church and these people and our lives to you, God. And here says name, we pray. Amen.